Calida Rawles (American, 1976) - A Promise (2020)

Dandelions

Some people think VG did not die by suicide but instead was the victim of an accidental shooting by some teens playing around with a gun. And that he claimed afterward that he'd done it himself, to protect the kids from being punished. (Wikipedia has an article with sources, for the curious.)

Everything I learn about this person makes me love him more and wish harder that things could have been different for him.

“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

Why...would you want to leave the bog

[Image dscription: A simple line drawing of a human facing a mirror, looking pleased, with their hands on their hips. Caption reads, "Be so completely yourself that everyone else feels INSATIABLE LUST." End image description.]

One of my favourite parts of working with kids is like… Very Gently subverting their idea of gendered topics… Like if a girl goes ‘no, sharks are a boy thing’ and you go “UM ACTUALLY THATS STUPID AND INCORRECT” they get freaked out, but if instead u go “Are you sure? Cause I think sharks are awesome, here’s a scale picture of a Megalodon” it’ll blow their tiny mind and they’ll be shitting themselves over it for days. 100% effective, 10/10 recommend

Things like this make me feel weirdly hopeful bc this is a fixable problem. A hard-to-fix problem but still a fixable one.

this chart is what haunts me. there is a massive amount of misinformation driving people to think that the problems Trump talks about solving even exist. without a functioning press, how do you campaign effectively against someone whose voters aren't even living in reality in three months

Oh, heck -- I'm sorry, y'all. I was sleepy the day I reblogged this and it seems I did my research a little too hastily. I can't find a legit NASA source for the above image...or any legit source at all, in fact. I fear it may be AI after all. Bummer. :-( The good news is, there are very lovely real pictures of Jupiter available here. AI is flaming dogshit but Jupiter is fucking awesome. Some highlights:

Lest I deceive anybody a second time, I do want to be transparent that most of the images that are submitted by the public (including the above four) seem to have been edited to enhance color or contrast, zoom in, or crop. There are also a few on the website that are very much an artistic rendition and merely inspired by the raw images. If you want to see just the raw images from the spacecraft cameras, you can do that by selecting "Junocam" (and not "Public" or "Both").

NASA just dropped the closest image ever taken of Jupiter.